1. Field
One embodiment of the invention relates to an operation control technique to be applied to an information processing apparatus such as a personal computer.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, a battery drivable and portable information processing apparatus such as a notebook personal computer has been very popular. Many of information processing apparatuses of this type have a wireless communication function capable of checking mail and downloading data even while a user is outing or on the move.
This type of information processing apparatus generally has a so called suspend/resume function capable of resuming the job from the suspend state at the closing time on the previous day. Various schemes for performing resume processing at a predetermined timing have been proposed (for example, see Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2002 341975). Upon performing resume processing at a predetermined timing, a personal computer can be activated as needed while reducing power consumption.
Assume that a wireless communication function allows to check mail and download data every predetermined timing. In this case, the information processing apparatus needs to satisfy conditions that, e.g., “the information processing apparatus can communicate with a base station”, “the remaining battery capacity is a predetermined value or more”, and “the free space of a storage device is a predetermined value or more”. If the information processing apparatus does not satisfy these conditions, resume processing at this timing must be prevented even at the predetermined timing.
The condition of the information processing apparatus changes depending on a task to be executed at each timing. Hence, the conditions corresponding to the respective tasks must be compared with each other to determine whether to perform resume processing.
However, conventionally, resume processing is unconditionally performed at a predetermined timing without controlling to individually determine whether to perform resume processing for each task.